1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a mail management system and, in particular, to a voice mailing system for performing both a voice mail service and a fax mail service and a service method therefor.
2. Background Art
In general, a proper mail management system is required for systematically managing voice messages and facsimile messages just as general data used in a general computer system. However, since digitalized voice data and facsimile data are fundamentally different from the general data in terms of real time processing, it is inadequate to use a conventional file management of the general computer system to manage the digitalized voice data and facsimile data. For this reason, voice mail is usually managed by a voice mail system, and fax mail is managed by a facsimile mail system separately.
Conventional voice mail system combines telephone and computer technology to create a system of "voice mail" over telephone lines that is analogous to the standard "written mail" system. In the conventional voice mail system such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,761,807 issued to Matthews et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,491 for Integrated Voice-Mail Based Voice And Information Processing System issued to Herrero Garcia et al., a caller first calls an intended recipient by telephone. If the intended recipient of the call is absent, the caller is automatically connected to the recipient's voice message system. This system enables the caller to record a message for the recipient-subscriber in the caller's own voice, which message is then stored in an electronic format by the system. When subscriber calls into the system, he/she can play back the voice message on his telephone by issuing suitable commands.
Conventional facsimile mail system such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,257,112 for Facsimile Mail System With Mail Center Equipment issued to Okada, on the other hand, serves as a mail center connected to a plurality of subscriber facsimile machines through a telephone network. Generally, such facsimile mail system is used to store an incoming facsimile message in an electronic format for later recall by the system subscriber. In this manner, the intended recipient may, for example, call into the office from a remote location, determine that a facsimile transmittal is available for him, and then direct that the text or image stored in the system be transmitted for printout to a facsimile machine at the remote location.
The facsimile mail system may be annotated with a voice message in a form of a composite voice/data message system such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,448,626 for Facsimile Mail System HavingMeans For Storing Facsimile Signals And Telephone Signals issued to Kajiya et al., and U. S. Pat. No. 5,483,580 for Methods And Apparatus For Non-Simultaneous Transmittal And Storage Of Voice Message AndDigital Text Or Image issued to Brandman et al. For example, Brandman et al. '580 discloses a composite voice/data message system that enables a call to create a composite voice and data message in an electronic format for storage in, and subsequently retrieval by the intended recipient from, a mailbox assigned to the recipient.
The integration of voice and facsimile mail messages is commonly used for multi-media systems such as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,972,462 for Multimedia Mail System issued to Shibata, and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,008,926 and 5,317,628 for Message Management System issued to Misholi et al. For example, Misholi et al. '926 discloses an integrated voice-and-facsimile store-and-forward message file system that provides for the sending, storage, and delivery of voice messages, fax messages, fax messages annotated with voice messages, and voice messages annotated with fax messages. The disclosed system additionally provides for display of fax messages on terminal screens, and the conversion of fax printed text messages into voice messages via text-to-speech conversion facilities.
More recent multi-media mailing systems are disclosed in a Korean Patent Application No. 93-17266 and a profile box management method of a voice mailing system is disclosed in a Korean Patent Application No. 93-26103, all of which have been assigned to the same assignee, Samsung Electronics Ltd., as the present invention. The conventional multi-media mailing systems are however complex. In addition, the voice mail and fax mail are separately managed by the mail management network. This often requires an advanced and complicated internal structure with high capacity memory to manage the voice mail and fax mail separately.